Money trail leads to … government

The author of May 26 letter, “”Wall Street wins while we suffer,” in protest against the government’s financial bailouts of several large corporations, was right to remonstrate against them, but was mistaken in several othe

r ways.

In reasoning that seems completely backward, he accused the recipients of the bailout money of being the origin of the national debt. The national debt existed long before 2008. And what about the givers of the money? The government has been spending more money than it takes in, with few exceptions, for decades. How could the recipients of the government’s liberality be responsible for our national debt when the government had given them the money in the first place?

I agree that the companies that received bailouts should be paying the money back and, in large part, this has been occurring. No company, though, has the power to manipulate the prices of any commodity at will and to believe so is to be ignorant of the impersonal economic forces at work in the marketplace. No amount of government controls will change this fact. On the contrary, they would actually make things worse by causing shortages.

Peter Scougale
Marysville